1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of medicament dispensing systems. More particularly, the invention relates to a system for automatically storing and dispensing pre-packaged pharmaceutical products and other products.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Pharmacists spend an increasing amount of their time at work educating patients about the proper use and handling of medicaments and pharmaceuticals. While this trend toward more patient counseling increases patients' knowledge about medicaments and decreases improper use of the medicaments, it leaves less time for pharmacists to fill and dispense the medicaments.
Automatic medicament dispensing systems, such as the one disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,919 (hereinafter referred to as the “'919 patent”), have been developed to assist pharmacists in the filling and dispensing of prescriptions and to therefore have more time for patient counseling. The system described in the '919 patent is extremely effective for filling and dispensing medicaments in the form of pills and capsules, but is not designed to dispense larger pre-packaged pharmaceuticals. Pharmacists in many areas dispense large quantities of pre-packaged boxes and/or bottles of pharmaceuticals and currently must manually locate and dispense these items, reducing the amount of time the pharmacists have for patient counseling.
Another problem with manually locating and dispensing pre-packaged pharmaceuticals is that errors are sometimes made. For example, because many boxes of pre-packaged pharmaceuticals look alike even though they have different strengths or quantities of medicaments therein, pharmacists occasionally locate and dispense the wrong box. Such errors can obviously have serious consequences for the patients receiving the products.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved medicament dispensing system that overcomes the limitations of the prior art. More particularly, there is a need for a medicament dispensing system for automatically storing and dispensing pre-packaged pharmaceutical boxes and/or bottles and other products so that pharmacists will have more time for patient counseling and will not make errors while manually dispensing the products.